//------------------------------//
// Phase Two: Infiltration 
// Story: A̶r̶t̶i̶f̶i̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ Intelligence 
// by chillbook1 
//------------------------------//

	Canterlot Castle, a massive beast of a fortress. Technically speaking, it was Canterlot’s City Hall, but most people identified it as Aitselec HQ. The ribcage guarding the heart of CCiOS. A large, round building going up several stories, surrounded by and connected to six tower-esque skyscrapers. I’d have to visit one of those buildings before making my move to the CCiOS’ core. Now, that may seem simple enough, but each of the towers had at least a dozen levels of security to get through. Silver’s ID will help me get through most of them, but there were still a few that I actually had to face.

One was a hallway that would scan my DNA, and, upon finding that I no longer work at Aitselec, electrocute me and drop me to the ground a drooling mess. Another was a series of retina and hoofprint scanners that would trip an alarm in all seven buildings if it didn’t recognize my signature. My favorite was the Wall; It would only open when commanded to by a certified and high-ranking Aitselec employee, and it would basically vegetate anyone who tried to pass through. That’s not mentioning the cameras, numbering in at an estimated crap-ton, the armed guards patrolling the halls, and the dense crowds that are always trying to see something interesting. My plan required me to sneak into at least one of the towers, get past all of that, and cause a distraction, just so I could get on with the actual attack plan.

Christ, this is a terrible idea.

“Aiden, you need to calm down,” said Twilight gently. We were a half block from the Castle, and my earlier serenity was all but gone. Now, I was a nervous wreck. What else is new? “Your heart rate is not supposed to be that high.”

“I can’t help it. We’re going into the belly of the beast here,” I said nervously. “The stakes couldn’t be higher if they were shooting up heroin. How am I supposed to calm down at a time like this?”

“Hey, don’t you want to look cool and brave for Rarity?”

That got me to grow a pair.

“Head in the game, come on, Aiden, you got this,” I muttered to myself. “If you botch this job, it’s all over. You got this.”

“Which building should we go for?” asked Twilight. I looked up to the six spires, each of them as terrifying as the next. Each tower housed a different department of Aitselec, those departments being Finances (gotta keep an eye on the bank if you want to keep up that image of charitability), PR (to tell people the “truth” of the company), Advertising (this one is just for laughs. Who doesn’t buy from Aitselec?), Customer Service (a touch of kindness when dealing with customers goes a long way, they say), External Affairs (keep loyal to your underlings, and they’ll stand by you through anything, and, finally, Research & Development. The place I used to work. The place where the magic happens.

“That back one, R&D,” I ordered. “It’s behind the main Castle, so we’ll have a little bit of concealment. Plus, it’ll be nice to go home for a bit.”

Twilight nodded. She tilted her head slightly at the rear-most tower, sizing it up. It was kinda funny to think about it; This will be the first time she ever actually saw the CCiOS servers. She was created to protect CCiOS, and this would be the first time she got to meet it. And, if I had my way, it’d be the last.

We advanced, our “disguises” apparently holding up. Twilight didn’t look as shitty as I thought she would, mostly due to Rarity directing me to a really good wig. She looked almost like herself, just without her horn. Add it to the list of improvements I’d need to make to her when Regal was out of the picture.

The R&D building was, in a word, terrifying. Despite my familiarity with it, I couldn’t help but be intimidated by it’s dark, looming stature. A hundred-plus stories of prototype, but likely working, tech that could do anything from sew a dress to melt my brain with microwaves. I stood in front of the massive double doors, staring at the dark tinted glass in thought. If there was ever a time for me to be a coward and back out, it was now. I could leave, play it safe, and lay low until I fell off of Regal’s radar. For whatever reason, maybe because Rarity was sitting in my Interface and could see me, I steeled myself and pushed open the door.

The lobby was pristine, and almost entirely deserted. Only three ponies were in the room besides me and Twi: a secretary behind a desk that protected the elevators from invaders, and two lightly armed security guards. One was directly to our right and the other was next to the secretary, operating a metal detector. Stage one of the infiltration was now underway. I was on the cusp of “the point of no return”.

“Hey… This is kinda embarrassing…” I said, trotting up to the desk. “So… I’m supposed to be giving this lovely young lady a tour of the department, right? Problem is… I… I forgot my ID upstairs.” I put on a small, embarrassed smile that I thought was pretty convincing. Through my mostly-closed eyes, I saw the secretary frown apologetically at me.

“I’m sorry, Miss, but there’s not much I can do about that,” she said. “Regulations, you know?”

“Of course, of course, but I had my buddy Silver give me his.” I flashed the card. “He said that he’d leave my name on the list?”

“Hold on just a second, let me check,” said the secretary. She tapped at her Interface, then tilted her head in confusion/amusement. “And you’re… Honey Hips?”

That was when I vowed to find Silver when this was all said and done, and strangle him to death. Slowly.

“Yup. That’s me…” I sighed. “My parents were assholes, I guess. So, am I good to go?” The secretary tapped at her Interface again, then held out her hoof. I passed her the ID, which she scanned and hoofed back over to me.

“Yup, head on up,” she said with a warm smile. It made me feel vaguely bad that I would soon be the reason she was out of a job. “Just head on through the metal detectors, and you’re free to go.”

“Ai-... I mean, Honey?” said Twilight nervously. “Metal detector?”

“Come over here for a sec, Miss,” I said, gesturing to the side. She followed me, slightly nervously. I leaned my head in close and dropped my voice to a whisper.

“Okay, so I didn’t want to say anything, because she’s just now coming to terms with it…” I whispered. “But that girl? She’s in the Make-a-Wish program. She’s probably not going to make it another three weeks. She has a pacemaker, and a bunch of aids for her stomach and liver and what have you. The detector is going to interfere with those, and it might just kill her early.”

The secretary gasped in shock, covering her mouth with her hoof. She glanced over to Twilight, then back to me, just utterly horrified for the apparently terminal mare.

“If you don’t mind me asking…” she said quietly. “What does she have?”

“It’d be easier to tell you what she doesn’t have,” I sighed. We were wasting time. “Would you mind? I swear, we won’t be more than twenty minutes.”

“Of course, of course,” she said kindly. She looked to the security guard and made a cancelling motion with towards her neck. The guard nodded and turned off the machine with his Interface.

“Thank you so much,” I said with a smile. “Come on, Violet, let’s go.” Twilight quickly followed me past the guy and slid down the hall. The path to the elevator had an almost surgical amount of sterility to it. The floor was shining stainless steel, as were the walls and even the elevators. I sighed wistfully at the sight of the glistening doors. Sometimes, I wished to go back to the time when I was oblivious to CCiOS’ corruption. I was a good little programmer, and Aitselec was like home to me. I had everything I could’ve wanted: a secure job, programs to write, a steady (and pretty hefty) paycheck. Guess that’s what I get for sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong.

“We need to go to one of the basements,” I said. “But Silver’s ID only grants access to floors 1 through ten. Can you get around that?”

“Already on it,” reported Twilight. A short second later and an elevator opened to our left. We entered and let the doors shut completely before I whispered the “Assert yourself” command the idle and waiting Fluttershy. Without creating a visual representation of herself, she froze the cameras that were surely in the elevator, playing a short loop of me and Twi standing and slightly fidgeting in place.

“If this is what Princess Celestia’s security is like, I have high hopes for this mission,” said Twilight. I shook my head, feeling my body lurch suddenly as we began our descent to the lower levels of the building.

“Silver’s card only gives us the most basic of clearance,” I said. “We’ll have to hack through a bunch of stuff manually. It won’t be easy.”

“I’d be concerned if it was. Nothing worth doing is ever easy,” said Twilight. “So, what exactly is the plan from here?”

“We’re gonna phlash the place,” I explained. “Before I got fired, I noticed a small vulnerability in my department, and I’m willing to bet that nopony else has noticed it since. We find it, force it open, and shove in a corrupt firmware image to every computer terminal and Interface here.”

“And brick the whole building,” said Twilight with a nod. “Out of curiosity, how come you didn’t fix the weakness when you first found it?”

“It was on my to-do list, but I never got around to it. It’s super tiny,” I said with a shrug. “I’m confident that nopony but me could’ve found it. Well, maybe Regal, but she’s had no reason to look for it.”

“Which is why I’m afraid that she did,” said Twilight. The elevator dinged, and the doors slowly opened. The two of us stumbled blindly into the dark corridor, taking a moment to get our eyes adjusted to the light, or lack thereof. If the ground floor was clean, sterile, and bright, the basement was anything but. The floor was dirty and rusty  as were the walls, as far as I could tell. The elevators were on the far end of the place, and it went forward for roughly a quarter mile before opening into a massive chamber filled with server towers. One of Canterlot Castle’s Auxiliary Armories.

“Clock up your heater,” I said. “It’s going to get chilly.” We headed forward, keeping an eye out for any of the defenses that were in place. We met our first after just a few moments, and it was only because of Twi’s amazing ability to take in information at a rate comparable to the speed of light.

“Stop!” she commanded suddenly. I didn’t even think about it, I just listened. “It’s the first defense, the DNA scanner.” She pointed a hoof up to the ceiling, where I could make out little ports or vents or something. Further inspection showed that they belted the hall and stretched for a few hooves forward. From where I was, I could make out a flat panel of some sort of touchscreen glass, a in-wall computer terminal. No doubt to control the scanner, and to turn it off for maintenance.

“Alright, you’re up, Shy,” I said. “Come on out.” A projector levitated from my bag and beamed Fluttershy’s image onto the world. She timidly stepped forward, inspecting the area before her before running across the floor to the terminal. This would take some doing to get done.

Twilight walked across, very slowly. It took her five minutes to take a walk that should’ve taken her thirty seconds. While she made her trek, Fluttershy was freezing the program periodically, essentially taking many frames and sewing them together into a five minute long animation. When Twilight crossed the threshold of the defense, another projector rose from my bag. This one projected a featureless outline of me. I walked inside of it and moved through the trap along with it. If I took a single step too quickly or too slowly, I would be outside of Fluttershy’s frozen zone. Unfortunately, even a CCiOS AI couldn’t entirely manipulate the system.

“That was very clever,” said Twilight as I crossed the finish line. Fluttershy whispered a nearly inaudible farewell and vanished back into my bag. “I’d expect no less from you.”

“You flatter me. I wasn’t even sure if this would work at first,” I admitted. “Glad it did, or I’d have had to drop the whole building’s power. This is a bit more inconspicuous.” Twilight nodded in agreement, then kept on down the hall. I followed her, urging myself to pay more attention to the world around me. If it weren’t for Twi, I’d have tripped the DNA scanner. I couldn’t afford to be so sloppy. My efforts were quickly rewarded, as I caught sight of a retina scanner before even Twilight. Of course, Twilight was probably holding back so as to not look like a show-off. A large circle that resembled a camera lens at about eye level, and a flat panel jutting out just beneath it. That was all it would take to lock down the building and send every security guard in all seven buildings after me.

“Rares, we need you out here,” I said. Quite quickly, Rarity’s projector floated out, followed by the beauty herself. She had a determined gleam in her eye, and had the new addition of orange reading glasses. God, she was gorgeous.

“How may I be of assistance, Ms. Aigo?” she asked. I couldn’t help but smile like a goof at her, despite the severity of the situation.

“Twilight needs to look like she works here,” I said. “Make her fabulous.” Upon hearing the command, Rarity activated her “Radiance” program. She produced a needle and thread from nowhere and sewed some invisible fabric into a gorgeous red dress (for no real reason at all), and threw it onto Twilight’s body.

“There you are, darling, you should be able to get on just fine now,” said Rarity, leaning back to admire her work. “Go on, darling, try it out.” Twilight moved to the scanner and practically shoved her face against the wall. Rarity rewrote the program on the scanners to see the camera that I used to improvise eyes for Twilight as Celestia’s retina. When she placed her hoof on the panel, it accepted it as Regal’s own hoofprint. My gal was something special, wasn’t she?

Er… Well, my artificially-generated, computerized, entirely not-real gal, that is. Am I pathetic or what?

“We should be good,” said Twilight. “You can go back inside, if you want, Rarity.”

“If you require my services, please, do not hesitate to call,” said Rarity. All too soon, Rarity disappeared into my bags. It was just as well, I suppose. I could do without the distraction.

“I’ve been concerned,” said Twilight as we advanced towards the Wall. “This has been far too easy so far.”

“I was just thinking the same thing. Maybe Regal cut back on security,” I foolishly suggested. “Or maybe she has them all in the center building to protect the servers. Or maybe, just maybe we got lucky this once, and they’re all on break or something.” I sighed. Even in my mind, that was hilariously unlikely.

We approached the Wall, which was a thin pane of highly compressed electricity, crackling faintly and leaking heat. It wasn’t quite solid, but it would stop you in your tracks if you’re dense or weak-willed enough. If you either really wanted to get through (like me) or were a bit on the lighter side (also like me), you could eventually work your way through. Problem was, if you did so, somewhere between 100,000 and a million volts of electricity would fry your primary motor cortex (most of your frontal lobe, really) and leave you a twitching, drooling, brain-dead waste of time. Not a fate I’d wish on anypony, least of all myself. Luckily for me, I had Twi with me.

“Last but not least, Twilight. Do your thing,” I instructed. Twilight nodded, then cleared her throat (needlessly, I might add).

“Name: Celestia Regal,” said Twilight, in a perfect imitation of Regal. “Position: Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Clearance Level: Six.” The Wall fizzled out of existence, slowly breaking apart from the center. A gust of cold wind poured from the ever-growing hole in the R&D building’s last line of defense. This room would have to be freezing, given the number of servers working at all times. They’d melt, otherwise.

“Alright. This is a hell of a lot of work we’re doing before the job actually starts,” I groaned. I stepped into the server room, which I was very familiar with. Fifty blinking server towers to either side, stretching from end to end with just a few hooves of space between them and the wall. To my left would be a door that would lead to Advertising. To my right, a door that leaded to External Affairs. But dead ahead, that door would lead directly to the heart of the CCiOS. Best part was, I wouldn’t have to work through those defenses again. In bricking this building, I’d also be bricking the tunnels adjacent to it. After this, I was in the black.

“Let’s see about this vulnerability of yours,” said Twi, closing in on the nearest servers.

“Pah. Good luck, Twi,” I snickered. “I know you’re good and all, but nopony is finding it. It’s so amazingly tiny. It took me three months to-”

“Found it. Relatively easily, actually,” said Twilight.

I hated her sometimes.

“You find my nearly-invisible vulnerability, the one that took me three months to uncover, in thirty seconds?”

“Meh. Twelve,” admitted Twi. “I thought it would crush your spirits if I spoke up immediately.”

“Well, you were right,” I sighed. “Rares, come make the fake firmware image.” Rarity stepped daintily out of my saddlebag with a small purse comprised of purple 1’s and 0’s. She opened the bag and pulled out an orb of bluish-black light. After giving it a once over, likely trying to find a flaw in her design she could correct, she handed it to Twilight, who slammed it onto the ground. The light burst outwards, bathing the entire room with its glow. Every server in the place stopped blinking, replaced by a constant crimson light. Anything that ran on these servers were now about as useful as a hooful of pebbles.

“Nice work, girls, now let’s go,” I said, gripped with that strange emotion called confidence. I began to think that we might actually succeed. I don’t know how much of that feeling was from the likeliness of our success and how much was from the adrenaline rush I got from taking down my former place of employ. The only form of revenge more absolute would be shutting down CCiOS itself.

Baby steps, Aiden. Baby steps.

“This is it,” said Twilight. She took point and led the way to and through the door. Again, no real resistance. We moved forward unhindered, which was massively nerve-racking. I kept expecting a squadron of Aitselec goons to come put the brakes on me, but it never happened. It was as glorious as it was terrifying.

“Aiden, what do you plan to do next?” asked Twilight. “When Princess Celestia is gone?”

“I dunno. Never gave it too much thought,” I admitted. “I guess I’ll keep doing what I do; Dig around for information until it kills me. Should be easier with you guys to help me.” Twilight went silent, but not in her usual way. This was a more uncomfortable quiet, more awkward. Tense, even.

“Aiden… I… Okay, it has nothing to do with you,” she promised me. “It’s just… Well, I’m free now. I want that for my friends. So, I was planning, when we found Number Seven, I was planning to design us all androids like this one and… Well, I thought you and I would go our separate ways.”

It wasn’t unexpected. In fact, it made far more sense than the idea of her sticking with me. Twilight could do basically anything she wanted. Why bother with a crook like me? Still, I managed to convince myself that Twilight and I were somehow forever linked. Truth be told, Regal was probably the only reason that Twilight stayed as long as she did. We were bound only by a common enemy, and when that goes, she has no reason to stay. I tried to kill her, NK, and, by proxy, the rest of the AI. It’d be in their best interest to put some distance between them and me.

“Right.” I said, shaking off the shock that shouldn’t have been. God, this hallways was stretching forever. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to, like, imply that… Of course, you have your own things going on. Forget I said anything.”

“Not to say that I’ll never see you again,” Twilight said, in what I assumed was her attempt to amend the situation. “Just… You must admit, it makes sense to do our own thing for a bit. We’ll get more done that way. I swear, it has-”

“Twilight, do me a favor, and stop trying to spare my feelings,” I said. “I hate bullshit. Let’s just focus on the task at hoof.”

I didn’t have to look to know that we were approaching the CCiOS’ servers. If the R&D’s server room was chilly, this one was arctic in nature. It would have to be, with double the hardware working three times as hard. If I wanted a short term end to CCiOS, all I needed to do was mess up the thermostat. However, I wanted something a bit more permanent.

“Twi, put the place on lockdown,” I ordered. I reached into my saddlebag and tossed her a bundle of six thick silver cylinders that looked vaguely like glue sticks. She went around the room to each of the doors, the one that connected to each of the Auxiliary Armories, and pressed a cylinder to each doorknob. They were magnetic locks, of Regal’s design and my composition, that were guaranteed to keep those doors locked until I either released them or a bomb went off, whichever came first. I also modified them to electrify the other side of the door, providing a nasty (nonlethal) dose of electricity to the poor bastard sent to check the servers.

“The belly of the beast,” I said. I couldn’t help but gawk at the sheer number of servers. The power of these babies was amazing.

“There’s a terminal over there,” said Twilight, pointing to my right. I nodded and trotted over to it. It was a tower about eye-level, with a flat screen tilted towards me. I took in a deep breath, then activated it. There was a short boot-up sequence, in which I was bombarded with Aitselec logos. Once they were done pushing their company (to their own freaking employees, by the way), I maneuvered to the employee net. It wasn’t hard to fabricate a user (I named it Nedia Ogia, in true Regal fashion), and I had Rarity and Twilight work together to get me security clearance. It took us around twenty minutes to get through, and it wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. I did get in eventually,and, from there, it should be easy.

“Alright, here we go,” I said. I bit my lip in anticipation, then began the upload. The video wasn’t long, and the file size was very small, so it should’ve been completed in seconds.

The upload never progressed from 0%

“What the hell?” I said. I ran my own brand of maintenance for what was probably the sixth time. The video just refused to upload, despite my best efforts. “Twi, check this out for me. What’s the issue?”

“Hm… I can’t be sure,” she said after a moment of thought. “It looks like it should be uploading fine, but…” She smacked her forehead, the answer apparently obvious.

“What? Did we do something dumb?” I asked.

“We bricked the R&D department, which feeds directly into here,” groaned Twilight. “That’s a sixth of the building’s resources. So, it would stand to reason that the servers have a failsafe. It clearly does.”

“It locked itself down,” I said, slapping myself similarly. “That makes sense! Why didn’t I think of that?!”

“What now?”

I bit my tongue in thought. I had one option, singular, and it probably wouldn’t work. Still, I couldn’t turn back now. I only had the one choice. I dug into my saddlebags and pulled out the AR visor. This thing scanned your brain and interpreted its electrical charges as commands, which is what allowed me and Regal to manipulate the chatroom, or ourselves inside of the chatroom. The ability to feel what was going on, interpret emotion, and even taste the coffee from the cafe, all of that was do to it sending tiny shocks to your brain. In theory, I could use the visor to quickly and easily manipulate the CCiOS, remove the failsafe, and upload the video like that.

Time to test my theory.

“Twilight, jack this in, will ya?” I asked. She nodded, then closed her eyes in concentration.

“Would you like me to come in with you?” asked Twilight.

“Yeah. Matter of fact, I want you to give the android to Fluttershy for a bit.” I slipped the visor on. “And Rarity will stay with her. If they manage to bust down the locks, Shy will be able to buy us enough time to get out.”

Fluttershy heard me, and stepped out of my bags nervously. Rarity was by her side, for emotional support, I imagine. I dropped onto my flank and powered on the visor. Since there was no pre-created sim, and there was no time or point in creating one, I’d be looking directly at a bunch of 1s and 0s, and would be moving them around with my mind. It’d be tough to make any sort of sense of the code, but with time, I’d be able to get it. I’d better, because I didn’t have much time before Regal wisened up to my RV scapegoat and came kicking in the door.

“Ready?” asked Twilight. “This is gonna be kinda bumpy.”

“Jack me in, Twi,” I commanded. Beams of red poured into my eyes, swiping across my retina with increasing speed. It soon tinted my vision entirely with crimson, blinding me. I was prepared for a series of green numbers on a black backdrop.

I collapsed onto a cold marble floor, hearing a body fall beside me. I couldn’t quite see where I was, my vision was splattered with flashes and blotches. I slowly regained my sight, just enough to make out the general area. Rows upon rows of mosaic windows, lining the walls of the massive chamber. Just a few yards from me was some sort of throne, elevated on a few steps draped with a red carpet.

“The hell?” I said. “Twilight?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” she mumbled. She pushed herself to her hooves by my side. “This isn’t proper?”

“Is that my faithful student I hear?” The voice chilled my blood. I was afraid of running into her, but I thought I’d at least do it in a way I understood.

Hooves tapped against marble, marking the elegant, powerful gait of the enemy. Celestia took a seat in her throne, smiling kindly. She wore a golden tiara and some sort of amulet or necklace thing, the type of thing that a princess would wear. What really floored me was her mane and tail; they shimmered and floated almost gaseously.

“Hello, Twilight,” she said brightly. “Who is this? A friend of yours, I take it?”

“What’s the deal, Regal? Don’t recognize me?” I said.

“Regal? That’s a name ponies have not known me as in many years,” chuckled Celestia slightly. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize you, sadly. Perhaps introductions are in order?”

“Princess Celestia? Can you explain to me what exactly you think you’re doing?” said Twilight coldly. “This isn’t funny.”

“Hm? You seem distressed. Come, let us-” Celestia’s image flickered faintly, fizzling out and coming back sharply. Her expression had drastically shifted. She wasn’t smiling anymore, not in the same way. This smile was more like a grimace. She was about to do something she didn’t want to.

But she’d find a way to enjoy it, in any case.

“Just as I am beginning to believe you to be a mare of intelligence, you go out and do something as foolish as this,” she said. “As if you expected me to not find out. Though, I should give credit where credit is due. It is most impressive of you to have hacked into my sim all the way from Whinnyapolis. I could hardly believe it at first.”

She thought we were in Whinnyapolis! We were getting away with it! I couldn’t let this advantage slip, I had to make the most of it. That meant one thing: Stall.

“What can I say? Between my own genius and your AI, it was easy,” I said snobbishly. “Oh, sorry, I meant my AI.”

“You intend to anger me, and you may well succeed,” said Celestia calmly. “But you are not aware of the ramifications of pissing me off on this day.”

“Piss you off? Would it piss you off if I told you I figured it out?” I said. Twilight looked at me in confusion, while Regal raised an eyebrow in intrigue.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I figured it out. Number Seven. I know who it is,” I said, smirking boldly.

“Aiden, what are you-”

“No point in hiding it, Twilight. There’s nothing she can do about it.” Regal grinned properly and stood up from her throne. She began to pace, holding back a snicker or two.

“Alright, Aigo, I will humor you,” said Celestia. “Who is the Seventh AI?”

“It’s obvious. It was staring me right in the face,” I bluffed. I hoped my poker face could hold up under the pressure. “I should’ve known from the start, but I figured it out eventually. The obvious truth, waltzing right in plain sight. The last Canterlot City Internal Operating System Artificial Intelligence…”

“Is you, Celestia Regal.”